I know that it has significant meaning to me but I struggle putting it into words to explain it to other people (especially other dya cis people). So like a few years ago I was thinking about if I may be trans femme. I have since realised that no, actually I was just struggling with it for a while because I don’t relate to the gender roles and expectations society puts on men. I now identify more strongly with being a man than ever before, and I love being a man in a gender-way. I just absolutely hate being a man in a “what role men have in society”-way.
I am really very attached to being biologically female. Loved being pregnant, nursing, enjoy sex in this body. I would be utterly distressed to wake up in a male body.
Personally, I think of male/female as biological, manly/womanly as things defined by the entire set of people who consider themselves men, or women (like if you are a woman you are by definition womanly) and masculine/feminine as performance - if you were a genderless alien and trying to fit in here, or a man portraying a woman in a comedy, the things you would do to perform gender - clothing and behaviors that are more superficial.
I think probably the last two are gender. And yes you can be manly as fuck without being masculine. Perhaps more manly, because you don’t feel you need to perform masculinity to be a man.